As the Doomsday clock continues counting down, so does our list of character spotlights! Last week, we reviewed the life, powers, and greatest feats of Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic). This week, we’re moving on to his wife, Susan Storm (The Invisible Woman). Most people tend to overlook Sue mainly because turning invisible and making force fields don’t catch the eye as much as a flying man on fire or a giant rock monster does. However, as we’ll find out, Sue can do A LOT more than her hero name would suggest. She may be the heart of the team, but she can be just as fierce and deadly if needed!

Origins

However, like many other heroes, Susan’s fierceness didn’t just happen overnight. Instead, it formed through years of struggle and early maturity. Despite his best efforts to be a good dad, Susan and Johnny’s father had serious drinking and gambling problems that were causing serious strain on the family. Things only worsened after the siblings’ mother died in a terrible car crash, causing their dad to spiral further until he ended up in prison for murder. This would force Susan and Johnny to live with their aunt, who ran a boarding house, and help her run it. The drastic change would also require Susan to mature quickly and take on a more active role in caring for Johnny. Years later, she would meet Reed Richards, who stayed at the boarding house while transferring to a new college. More time would pass, and Susan forms a relationship with Reed, moves out of the boarding house, and pursues a brief acting career. However, everything changed when Reed (by now her fiancé) asked her and Johnny to accompany him on a journey to outer space. The only catch was that the launch had to be secret, since the government was threatening to cancel Reed’s project. Nevertheless, Sue agreed and accompanied her fiancé, her brother, and Reed’s best friend Ben, who piloted the craft. But as we know, what should’ve been a breathtaking once-in-a-lifetime experience ended disastrously when cosmic rays engulfed the ship, transforming the group and giving them superpowers. (Fun fact: Sue actually used to call herself the Invisible Girl for a while after that, but she renamed herself the Invisible Woman after breaking free from a supervillain’s mind control and influence)

Powers and Abilities

As previously mentioned, Susan’s hero name gives a basic summary of her powers. She can make herself, others, or objects invisible by manipulating the electromagnetic spectrum to bend and refract the light around her. But I believe the power that gets overlooked the most is her ability to create force fields, which are made from pure psionic energy (think of it like Psylocke with her psionic blade in X-Men). Sure, at first, it doesn’t sound as exciting as the others’ powers, but Sue’s force fields are on the same level as her teammates (maybe even more)! For instance, her force fields are actually strong enough to withstand attacks from—or even contain—insanely powerful beings! She has been known to contain or survive attacks that range from Hulk-level strength to cosmic-level powers, which already make them a challenge for most heroes to defeat. Yet the very fact that Sue can withstand such power with her shields definitely deserves recognition. In fact, she can make multiple force fields at once, making her an amazing defender with unparalleled discipline and focus.  

However, there’s another side to Sue’s powers that I personally believe doesn’t get talked about enough (because I had no idea about this)! For instance, she has the potential to create force fields inside the human body, expanding them to crush or blow something apart, or cut off certain organs from the rest of the body. Think about that for a minute: Susan can make microscopic ones as well as external ones! If the ability to kill the Hulk wasn’t terrifying enough, she could kill someone without them even knowing what was going on. On a less terrifying note, she can also use that ability to shield vital organs from lethal attacks. Either way, the amount of precision and control Sue would need to not only make a forcefield that small, but also know where specifically in the body to make such a forcefield is absolutely insane. But if she doesn’t plan to make forcefields that small, she has the potential to quickly expand her external forcefields to knock enemies back with the force of a speeding truck. In addition, she can also form her own weapons and constructs with her psionic energy. On a personal note, I feel embarrassed for not knowing this because if she can make invisible force fields and restraints, then it should’ve been a no-brainer that she can make more than that. Regardless, it’s already stressful enough when you’re fighting someone with a weapon, but fighting someone with weapons you literally can’t even see? That’s terrifying on a whole other level! 

But even with all this incredible power, there’s always a cost. Much like her husband, her main weakness is in how much she exerts herself in a battle. It goes without saying, but even though she can cover the whole planet with a force field, it doesn’t mean she can hold it for very long. Heck, creating normal-sized and/or multiple force fields at once already takes a lot of discipline and energy; imagine how creating and maintaining one the size of a planet, while being attacked by some of the most powerful beings in the Marvel universe, must be for her. Further, if anything distracts or overwhelms her focus, her fields will weaken if she doesn’t stay focused. And despite how much I’ve hyped up how impenetrable her force fields are, it’s important to keep in mind that they’re not completely impenetrable. For instance, she’s not fully immune to mental or psychic attacks or manipulations, such as the aforementioned supervillain (Psycho Man) that exploited Susan back when she was the Invisible Girl. Certain kinds of magic and cosmic energy have also been known to penetrate her shields, and they also can’t prevent teleporting characters (like Nightcrawler) from getting through. But even with all of these liabilities, Susan pushes herself just as much as Reed to achieve successful results. She stays true to the mature caregiver she had to be as a child, protecting and even fighting for the lives of people and her family. 

Greatest Feats

Susan may not have created the Bridge or rebuilt the whole multiverse from scratch, but she has more than earned her spot on the team multiple times. For instance, do you remember when I said Sue can be fierce and deadly when needed? Well, in Fantastic Four #246, Sue squared up against Dr. Doom himself and lived to tell about it. When Doom enacted a plan to manipulate the team and endanger innocent civilians, Sue was having none of that and calmly told Doom that she could make a force field inside his skull or lungs and crush them without much effort. Now, I want you to keep in mind that Doom has challenged or survived beings like Mephisto, Galactus, and would even steal powers from the Beyonders in later years. And yet this one threat from Susan Storm, who Doom never took seriously, made him back off. He finally understood what she was capable of: that she could bypass all his defenses and kill him without even lifting a finger. He even admitted (to himself, of course) that Sue was the most dangerous member of the group! How crazy is that? Well, hold onto your hats because it’s gonna get even crazier from here! In another moment, the Celestials showed up on Earth to judge the world, but their presence alone was enough to cause natural disasters across the globe. To protect the world from the cosmic imbalance, Susan created a force field capable of surrounding the whole planet! Thanks to her efforts, the other heroes were able to save lives, gather information, and find a way to survive the encounter. While this may paint her in a defensive role rather than a more offensive one, this moment absolutely cannot afford to be understated. I mean, she was able to cover A PLANET with a force field, which could protect it from CELESTIAL-LEVEL power! Of course, she wouldn’t have held it for too long, especially if the Celestials were actually trying to attack the Earth, but the very fact that she could make a force field of this scale needs to be addressed! 

However, there’s still one more feat that all but tops the previous two, and it definitely needs addressing! In the 1984-85 edition of “Secret Wars,” the Beyonder takes pieces of different worlds and realities, stitching them into a patchwork planet known as Battleworld. All of this is part of a sick experiment that the Beyonder is conducting (trying to understand the desires of “lower beings”), so he also abducts many heroes (including Sue) and villains to pit them against each other. Being stranded on the craziest world imaginable, where the very laws of the universe are moot, the casualties are bound to be high. Or at least they would be…if Sue wasn’t there. Throughout the whole story, Susan is shown protecting many heroes and key figures in more ways than one. First, of course, she uses her force fields to shield her friends and innocent civilians, while also keeping more dangerous villains at bay. This may just sound like another “Sue is just using force fields” moment, but you have to keep in mind that this isn’t just some ordinary fight. As previously mentioned, Battleworld is a place where the known is now replaced with something crazier and perplexing. Plus, Sue already exerts a massive level of concentration and effort into her powers during lower-scaled fights, so to take that on a world where everything is chaos? If that doesn’t show her as an amazing tactician as well as defender, then I don’t know what will. She doesn’t just shield, she decides her battles on her own terms. Moving on, the second way she protected everyone is by serving as their emotional anchor. This definitely doesn’t sound like a huge role either, but sometimes small things like that can make a huge difference. Since Reed and mostly everyone else were largely ignoring her, Sue was forced to step up and act more authoritatively. While Reed was obsessed with stopping the Beyonder, and Johnny and Ben were frustrated with everything going on, Sue had to recenter Reed’s focus and calm the others down. She’s also shown to calm arguments between heroes and villains, to keep everyone grounded and on track. She may not have obliterated the Beyonder, but her presence alone prevented casualties from escalating. If she weren’t there, maybe the heroes could’ve survived, and maybe someone else would’ve been the anchor, but I doubt they would’ve kept everyone from panicking or ripping each other apart the way Sue did. Sometimes it’s the (in our eyes) smallest roles that have the biggest impact. 

Conclusion

Susan Storm is more than just an Invisible Woman; she’s THE Invisible Woman. With her wide range of powers and specialities, it’s no wonder that the Fantastic Four got their name. And on a personal note, I’m so glad I got to write this article, because I’m guilty of being one of the people who underestimated this character. I knew her force fields were strong and everything, but I didn’t take the time to truly dive deep into what she can do. And given what I’ve found and written about, I can’t wait to see how she handles Doom in “Avengers: Doomsday!”